Rickie Lee Jones s/d

[koganbot]

OK, I know way less about Rickie Lee Jones than about most any other of the influential singer-songwriters, but lonepilgrim embedded this live track and, as the YouTube guy says, "This shit rocks!"

Rickie Lee Jones and a bunch of half-naked guys:

"Rickie Lee Jones, WHITE GIRL" (Watch on YouTube)

So, tell me more. What do you know about Rickie Lee Jones, what do you like, what do you dislike? In my comment I told Peter "I'd only heard a smattering of Rickie Lee Jones over the years, have no idea of the arc of her career, but this track actually fits right into my expectations, sort of a cross between Patti and Joni..." And then I went into my usual shtick about Joni et al. leading to Stevie and Sheryl and Alanis which in turn leads into the '00s teen-confessional.

Comments

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Well, of course, my favorite song by Rickie Lee Jones is her first and biggest hit "Chuck E.'s In Love," not only because it's a great jazz-pop ditty but because it's the only hit single ever written about ME. I'm also a fan of her very beatnik-boppy (more proto-"Square Biz" and/or Sophie B. than gurl-Tom Waits if you ask me) '79 debut LP (esp "Danny's All Star Joint" and "Last Chance Texaco"), and her hilarious stoned award show appearances around the same time (which may well be available on youtube, though I've never checked.) But after that, I was under the impression that she totally reined herself in -- Pirates, the one that finished Top 10 Pazz & Jop I think in 1981, seemed really subdued to me at the time, though I haven't listened to it in decades. Maybe I was wrong? Maybe she got better again later? Now I'm curious. Think I have an advance of her new album (due in October) around here somewhere; didn't expect this, but you've convinced me to actually listen to it.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Also, didn't you used to name Laura Nyro as part of the lineage you're referring to (maybe whilst discussing Sophie B Hawkins)? Or is that a different lineage? (Nyro to Rickie Lee seems pretty direct, I would think, or at least I've always assumed so, albeit without ever having listening to Nyro very much.) (Janis Ian seems an obvious proto-teen-confessional source, too, seeing how for her first confessional hit she actually was a teen, and for her second several years later she was singing about being seventeen. Also seems kind of beatnicky, hence maybe an early inspiration on Rickie Lee.)

[koganbot]

Oh yes, definitely Nyro (who's got some of soul-jazz leanings, iirc, though I've never owned a Nyro album) and Janis Ian (who's still performing around; just read a promo email where whoever was being promo'd was on the same bill as Ian). Peter links Rickie Lee to jazz, and I don't think of her vocals as being particularly jazz, the musicians on that track I embedded are definitely willing to go electric jazz at moments, while basically being rock.

[koganbot]

Your post with the italics corrected:

Well, of course, my favorite song by Rickie Lee Jones is her first and biggest hit "Chuck E.'s In Love," not only because it's a great jazz-pop ditty but because it's the only hit single ever written about ME. I'm also a fan of her very beatnik-boppy (more proto-"Square Biz" and/or Sophie B. than gurl-Tom Waits if you ask me) '79 debut LP (esp "Danny's All Star Joint" and "Last Chance Texaco"), and her hilarious stoned award show appearances around the same time (which may well be available on youtube, though I've never checked.) But after that, I was under the impression that she totally reined herself in -- Pirates, the one that finished Top 10 Pazz & Jop I think in 1981, seemed really subdued to me at the time, though I haven't listened to it in decades. Maybe I was wrong? Maybe she got better again later? Now I'm curious. Think I have an advance of her new album (due in October) around here somewhere; didn't expect this, but you've convinced me to actually listen to it.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

And wow...She sure as fuck doesn't sound reined in in that clip. Any idea when that's from? (Oh okay...In the short interview at the end of the song, she says Chuck E was 17 years ago, so circa 1996, I guess.) (Matter of fact, I don't know of any Patti that sounds that un-reined-in for the past 23 years ago. Not that I've been paying especially close attention to her, either.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Well, that's clearly her post-grunge phase (she mentions Nirvana as an influence), not to mention maybe her jam-band phase (being at the Horde Festival and all), neither of which phases I ever realized she had. But her early music had saxophones in it. Which counts as jazz in a way (though back then, Gerry Rafferty and Quarterflash and Supertramp and Men At Work and Springsteen assured saxes were in rock a lot. I wonder why that ended.)

[koganbot]

Well, everybody on the Web is referring to "Chuck E's In Love" as "jazz-flavored," so I guess it's, you know, jazz-flavored, though I'd probably just say, as you do, "beatnik." Also, if I embarrassed easily I'd find her embarrassingly mannered. Need to give her lyrics some attention to see if she surmounts the usual bullshit (or at least gives us inventive bullshit). And Nyro seems all over that song, assuming my memory of Nyro is correct.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

all the stuff i have is on vinyl, so will have to dig it out and crank up my steam phonograph to remind myself: what i remember as the period when she was ON is from pirates through to magazine, with the "girl at her volcano" EP (possibly live?), which is between them, as the highpoint -- then a step back away from whatever

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i haven't thought about her for years actually -- there's was a kind of a "smoky nightclub chanteuse" fad in the uk just as i started out writing, and RLJ was off on the hard-to-parse edge of it, bcz unlike all the others she wasn't retro really (or somehow didn't feel it)

my two main taste-mentors then -- ian penman and richard cook -- were both nuts for her: i think i didn't quite get it, where "it" was the sexiness they seemed to be overwhelmed by (which just meant she wasn't my type, then)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

So, sad to say, new album Balm in Gilead is mostly sounding like a snooze to me -- more mannered goody-goody low-key neo-soul and/or alt-country singer-songwriter than anything else. Still curious about the rest now, though (especially whatever she may have recorded in the mid / late '90s, circa that noisy video clip. And okay, also that 10-inch Girl In A Volcano EP or whatever it's called, but that has more to do with my incurable fetish for 10-inch EPs than anything musical.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

And when she tries to go "jazzy," she tends to revert to this cutesy pootsey little girl squeak that I find difficult to stomach (even though it was probably already there to a certain extent 30 years ago, just maybe didn't bug me as much back when she had actual idiosyncratic and kinda funky finger-snapping and diddy-bopping very-early-Springsteen-style hooks to back it up.)

Best track on the new one might actually be "Blue Ghazel," an instrumental, for all the gothic midnight atmosphere at the beginning, turning into sad eerie blues guitars and buzzing insects and horns -- these days, I could almost hear something like that metal album. Though I guess it counts as jazz, too.

And Rickie does wind up getting a sort of a "lush swooping sound" going in a couple of the album's later tracks, "The Gospel Of Carlos, Norman And Smith" and "A House On Bayless St." But I still can't see wanting to return to them, in part because she never does anything that makes her words remotely grab me.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i couldn't be bothered powering up my steam phonograph -- it meant going out and buying bulbs and everything for that room -- so i DLed pirates and volcano: but the populist metric of how ppl on soulseek file their LPs the first is "jazz" and the second is "rock", which is exactly the wrong way round... volcano is a (mostly) live club night, and she's being a "jazz-singer" in material and arrangements, ("lush life", "my funny valentine"; a vibraphone!) ; also doing less of the "little girl" thing with her voice, which leaves me cold but i guess some people really like

don't know if this when she was still an item with tom waits -- she does a song he co-wrote -- but she has the ghost of a version of his drunk's slur on some of volcano, which is quite appealing

[koganbot]

What do you think of this track, and her post-grunge jam-band phase in general (which for all I know this may be the only representative of, but if the album from this time, Ghostyhead, is like this song, I'm on it - though this song isn't on it)?

[koganbot]

OK, I'm listening to Ghostyhead now. Varying between jam band (but softer than "White Girl") and folk-drone, the common element being that she's always sounding self-consciously fucked-up. When she goes "little girl" she reminds me of Julie Christmas of Battle Of Mice and Made Out Of Babies in that she's not trying to be cute but spooked, though for Rickie it's just another variety of fucked-up.

Don't know yet what I think of this as art (I'd say I'm liking about 33% of the alb). If I knew her irl I would run in the other direction.

RLJ

[lonepilgrimuk.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to have provoked a discussion on a favourite artist.
I would say (even) as a fan that her material is pretty uneven. She does slip into the 'little girl' persona a little too easily although she sometimes uses it to good effect - on 'Bonfires' from her current album for example. It's her voice that is sampled on The Orb's 'Little Fluffy Clouds' so it is a reflection of her personality to an extent. I guess I like her because she's willing to go out on a limb - even if she sometimes ends up flat on her face.
'Pirates' is probably her richest, most consistent album but I'd also recommend 'Traffic from paradise' which features Leo Kottke and one song whose opening line is 'A monk with a hard-on in a lavender robe...'
'The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard' is a semi-improvised response to the Gospels and conjures up the beatnik roots of the VU for me (in my ignorance) and is the album closest in spirit to 'White girl' - there's a youtube clip of her performing 'Nobody knows my name' which gives a flavour.
The White Girl track was played live sometime before 'Ghostyhead' but has not had an official release other than as a live track available from the RLJ site.
'Ghostyhead' is her take on Portishead and although I like it I always feel the lyrics are not completely developed.
She's talked on occasions about influences - many of which can be found on the covers albums she's released - show tunes/standards - sixties folk/pysch, west coast bands like Steely Dan - and Laura Nyro gets a mention in a song on her first album

Re: RLJ

[koganbot]

Many thanks.